"She sure did," the other said, rubbing his crotch. "And I sure could use her now."
To my right, the convicts who were standing at the front of the bullpen looked out at reception with their hands resting on the cross section of bars. It was dark inside our cell, and the deputies didn't seem interested in what went on in there.
I was glad I was dressed. My right leg continued to bounce.
When the heavy metal door of the cellblock slammed shut, a shudder went through my body. A sudden jolt of panic made me want to scream out to the guards, "I was just kidding! I wasn't really going to rob that Photomat. Could I please go home now?"
But it was too late. The guards were already gone.
It was ten o'clock by the time they moved me upstairs. I was placed in a cellblock with mostly white, nonviolent offenders. They no longer segregated by race, the deputy had told me, but they did try to separate first-time offenders. I was six foot two, but at a hundred and forty-eight pounds, I wasn't much more than skin and bones.
On some level, I was still half expecting my parents to show up and take me home-hoping I'd learned my lesson. That maybe this was all just part of a Scared Straight program that I had heard about, where they took teenagers inside a prison to frighten them away from crime. But the reality of my situation was as cold as the metal slab that would cradle me to sleep that night.
I started to cry, but quickly muffled it. I was certain that if the other inmates heard me, they'd see me for what I was-a sniffling coward who was pretending to be something he's not. Or worse, they would see for me for what I was.
"Never!" My brother Rick smacked me on the chin the night before. "Never, let them know what you're thinking."
I could still almost smell the tobacco on his finger, from when he shook it in my face. He was imitating Marlon Brando in The Godfather. We shared a love of gangster films, but in that moment, I was alone in my cell, and the wall of my emotional front was about as thin as the cheap mattress that was folded over my bunk.
Inside the cell, a steel toilet and sink were attached to the back wall. Smoke rings burned on the ceiling spelled out the words Fuck and You and Hell and Here. Simon, '77 was scratched on the sidewall. It reeked of bleach and ammonia, piss and damp cigarettes. And, like the bullpens downstairs, there wasn't any toilet paper in sight.
By the time we got upstairs, we had missed dinner, so it would be morning before I'd eat again. I was hungry, but the pang of anxiety quickly took over. For the first time in over twelve hours, I was alone. I could finally drop the tough guy, this-doesn't-faze-me, I've-been-through-it-all-before act. It probably wasn't working anyway, but I had to keep it up. Ricky had been coaching me for weeks. My God! What'sgoing to happen to me?
I unfolded the mattress across the steel frame and wrapped the sheet around it. They didn't have pillows in the county jail, so I folded the end of the pad under itself to prop my head. I'd rather my feet dangle on cold metal than sleep with my head lying flat.
I stared up at the ceiling and tried to imagine how someone had scorched the letters that formed each word. It would have taken too many matches. Perhaps they burned their sheets?
I lit a cigarette with my last match and thought about my brother. I wondered what he was doing and whether he missed me.
The lights went out with a buzz and a thump. The light from the catwalk cast shadows in my cell. The silhouette of bars, pitched on angles, crisscrossed the walls.
The next morning, the lights came back on with the same buzz and thump that accompanied darkness. I hadn't slept well, tossing and turning on the slab, my head full of visions of street fights and gladiators, drag queens and bikers. It felt like I'd just fallen asleep.
I lay awake for several minutes, wondering if I'd be transferred to Jackson today. An old timer, down in the bullpen, had mentioned the economy and prisons and a shortage of beds. I drifted back to sleep, but the sound of the door to my cell sliding open and scuffling feet woke me up. I looked out and saw several inmates running past my cell.
I jumped up to look out.
Inmates at the end of the cellblock were grabbing milk, juice, and small wax paper bags from the cross-section of the bars. Breakfast consisted of three whitepowdered donuts, a half pint of milk and a four-ounce container of orange juice. I walked down to get it, but when I got there, there was only a carton of milk left.
"You snooze-You lose," a white inmate said. He was holding an orange juice and milk, but someone had taken his bag as well. "You gotta get here quick or some motherfucker steals your donuts, man."
I took the milk from the bars and looked to see if I could spot a deputy through the small opening in the outer door.
"Don't even bother to call the deps, Little Bro." He walked hack toward his cell, "They really don't give a fuck."
I was hungry. I hadn't eaten since the steak dinner my brother bought me two days earlier. The next morning, when the light came on, I was up and ready for the mad breakfast derby. When the deputies pulled the brake, like a horse bolting from the starting gate, I was off and running to get my three powdered rings from the cross-section of the finishing line. Win, Place, or Show, I was sure to get mine. But this time, when I arrived at the front of the line, the same
